Cook Local, Eat Global

It’s true. I should probably have let these little “Plum Purple” radishes grow a bit bigger before pulling them, but these marble-sized babies were so cute, I just had to bring them home from the garden plot.

Kat ate one of them last night at dinner–it was her first radish. She watned to try it because not only had she helped grow it, but it was purple. Purple vegetables are superior, of course.

Speaking of purple vegetables, our “All Blue” potato plants are growing quickly–so quickly in fact that we’ll need to hill them up next week. You can see them in the foreground here, surrounded with baby red, yellow and white onions. In the background are our “Cherokee Purple,” “Green Zebra” and “Black from Tula” heirloom tomatoes, some of which have already started to blossom! The purple radishes are interplanted among the tomato plants and will be really ready to harvest in a week, maybe less. Interplanted among the potatoes are “French Breakfast” radishes.

I always plant fast-growing crops like radishes or lettuces among slower growing crops like tomatoes–they take up the space until the bigger crops take off and need the room. By then, the radishes are ready to harvest, and from the same bit of soil, two crops are grown at the same time.

I do the same thing with onions, though they aren’t fast growing. They actually grow quite slowly, but they are small and are easy to tuck in here and there among other crops. They also can repel various pests with their aromatic natures, much the way that the smell of marigolds repel some bugs above ground while the chemicals exuded from their roots repel nematodes.

Companion planting and intercropping are just two ways to maximize space and use the natural defense mechanisms that plants posses to protect themselves to also protect other plants.

As more vegetables and fruits ripen and are ready to harvest, I’ll write about them and keep everyone up to date.